


Into flame

by thisismybrainrain



Category: Carol (2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 13:25:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5930074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisismybrainrain/pseuds/thisismybrainrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Therese's thoughts on her mother, father & the thresholds in her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into flame

Therese had often wondered what her mother would have thought of Carol and her. Walking down the street barely brushing up against one another. If she’d had been able to decode the signs. If she’d have grown too distant of Therese’s truth, She wondered when her mother packed her off to the convent school, if had ever known Therese at all. 

Her mother had never voiced her opinions further than referring to some stories she’d heard of ‘people like that’ around Therese. Only mentioned them in passing. Therese had always paid more attention when her father had spoke anyway. She had always loved his manner, his art and his quiet nature. 

She tried not to think about her father’s gaze falling on her and Carol walking up a street in the city because, if he had been alive and able, she thought he would have been happy to see that she was happy and that would have been the end of that. 

She had cut loose from her mother years ago, when she stepped over the first threshold of that convent. After her father died. There was nothing but their shell of a home and, her mother’s foot was half over another threshold ready to start up another family with a the man who had always been only a pink blur and booming voice to Therese. 

Therese knew it was her mother who had wanted her married to a good Catholic man but, had said, she had to focus on her studies and her connection with god first and foremost, her only relationship she was to worry about aged twelve with her suitcase of her favourite possessions was school. 

Fresh out of school and into the world of work, Therese was full of possibility and Richard had been so kind to her. He was not the first boy she’d kissed and, certainly not the first person to hold her attention but he was there with his canvases and sometimes-questionable sweaters and he was safe. 

//

 

Therese’s life was marked by a handful of thresholds up to now:

The last time she stepped out of her mother’s house; the funeral home where she said her last goodbye to her father’ the convent; her first apartment; her second apartment; Richard’s house; Frankenberg’s department store; Carol’s house; the motel in Waterloo; the diner where Abby had given her the letter; The Times; The Ritz Tower Hotel; Dannie’s apartment; The Oak Room and all the places that began to blur after she had looped back again and seen Carol’s new apartment on that first night. 

Therese had felt like a dormant well of ashes without Carol and, when Carol’s eyes had stared and, her hand squeezed at her shoulder, Therese had become a Phoenix stretching back into being. 

Even when she and Carol were walking down the street and their hands had caught the others, Therese felt as if all the gravity in her was fragile, but, with Carol beside her she realised, even if her mother, now some distant stranger to her were to pass the on the street, Therese knew she would not care because with her love for Carol blooming and burning inside her chest she was that phoenix roaring in the red of love and she would not turn to dust for anyone.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to frostbite883 for the prompt: Can you make a Carol writing prompt for me (one in which Therese's mom somehow finds out about her daughter's relationship with Carol)?. I know this isn't exactly what you wanted. But it inspired this. So thank you.


End file.
